“Sure you're done with it?”
“Oh, yes,” replied the girl, the suggestion of a smile on her face, and in her voice the suggestion of a tear. “Yes; I was just going.”
But she did not go. She turned instead to the end of the alcove and sat down before a table placed by the window. Leaning her elbows upon it she looked about her through a blur of tears.
Seen through her own eyes of longing, it seemed that almost all of the people whom she could see standing before the files of the daily papers were homesick. The reading-room had been a strange study to her during those weeks spent in fruitless search for the work she wanted to do, and it had likewise proved a strange comfort. When tired and disconsolate and utterly sick at heart there was always one thing she could do—she could go down to the library and look at the paper from home. It was not that she wanted the actual news of Denver. She did not care in any vital way what the city officials were doing, what buildings were going up, or who was leaving town. She was only indifferently interested in the fires and the murders. She wanted the comforting companionship of that paper from home.
It seemed there were many to whom the papers offered that same sympathy, companionship, whatever it might be. More than anything else it perhaps gave to them—the searchers, drifters—a sense of anchorage. She would not soon forget the day she herself had stumbled in there and found the home paper. Chicago had given her nothing but rebuffs that day, and in desperation, just because she must go somewhere, and did not want to go back to her boarding-place, she had hunted out the city library. It was when walking listlessly about in the big reading-room it had occurred to her that perhaps she could find the paper from home; and after that when things were their worst, when her throat grew tight and her eyes dim, she could always comfort herself by saying: “After a while I'll run down and look at the paper.”
But to-night it had failed her. It was not the paper from home to-night; it was just a newspaper. It did not inspire the belief that things would be better to-morrow, that it must all come right soon. It left her as she had come—-heavy with the consciousness that in her purse was eleven dollars, and that that was every cent she had in the whole world.
It was hard to hold back the tears as she dwelt upon the fact that it was very little she had asked of Chicago. She had asked only a chance to do the work for which she was trained, in order that she might go to the art classes at night. She had read in the papers of that mighty young city of the Middle West—the heart of the continent—of its brawn and its brain and its grit. She had supposed that Chicago, of all places, would appreciate what she wanted to do. The day she drew her hard-earned one hundred dollars from the bank in Denver—how the sun had shone that day in Denver, how clear the sky had been, and how bracing the air!—she had quite taken it for granted that her future was assured. And now, after tasting for three weeks the cruelty of indifference, she looked back to those visions with a hard little smile.
She rose to go, and in so doing her eyes fell upon the queer little woman to whom she had yielded her place before the Denver paper. Submerged as she had been in her own desolation she had given no heed to the small figure which came slipping along beside her beyond the bare thought that she was queer-looking. But as her eyes rested upon her now there was something about the woman which held her.
She was a strange little figure. An old-fashioned shawl was pinned tightly about her shoulders, and she was wearing a queer, rusty little bonnet. Her hair was rolled up in a small knot at the back of her head. She did not look as though she belonged in Chicago. And then, as the girl stood there looking at her, she saw the thin shoulders quiver, and after a minute the head that was wearing the rusty bonnet went down into the folds of the Denver paper.
The girl's own eyes filled, and she turned to go. It seemed she could scarcely bear her own unhappiness that day, without coming close to the heartache of another. But when she reached the end of the alcove she glanced back, and the sight of that shabby, bent figure, all alone before the Denver paper, was not to be withstood.
“I am from Colorado, too,” she said softly, laying a hand upon the bent shoulders.
The woman looked up at that and took the girl's hand in both of her thin, trembling ones. It was a wan and a troubled face she lifted, and there was something about the eyes which would not seem to have been left there by tears alone.
“And do you have a pining for the mountains?” she whispered, with a timid eagerness. “Do you have a feeling that you want to see the sun go down behind them tonight and that you want to see the darkness come stealing up to the tops?”
The girl half turned away, but she pressed the woman's hand tightly in hers. “I know what you mean,” she murmured.
“I wanted to see it so bad,” continued the woman, tremulously, “that something just drove me here to this paper. I knowed it was here because my nephew's wife brought me here one day and we come across it. We took this paper at home for more 'an twenty years. That's why I come. 'Twas the closest I could get.”
“I know what you mean,” said the girl again, unsteadily.
“And it's the closest I will ever get!” sobbed the woman.
“Oh, don't say that,” protested the girl, brushing away her own tears, and trying to smile; “you'll go back home some day.”
The woman shook her head. “And if I should,” she said, “even if I should, 'twill be too late.”
“But it couldn't be too late,” insisted the girl. “The mountains, you know, will be there forever.”
“The mountains will be there forever,” repeated the woman, musingly; “yes, but not for me to see.” There was a pause. “You see,”—she said it quietly—“I'm going blind.”
The girl took a quick step backward, then stretched out two impulsive hands. “Oh, no, no you're not! Why—the doctors, you know, they do everything now.”
The woman shook her head. “That's what I thought when I come here. That's why I come. But I saw the biggest doctor of them all today—they all say he's the best there is—and he said right out 'twas no use to do anything. He said 'twas—hopeless.”
Her voice broke on that word. “You see,” she hurried on, “I wouldn't care so much, seems like I wouldn't care 't all, if I could get there first! If I could see the sun go down behind them just one night! If I could see the black shadows come slippin' over 'em just once! And then, if just one morning—just once!—I could get up and see the sunlight come a streamin'—oh, you know how it looks! You know what 'tis I want to see!”
“Yes; but why can't you? Why not? You won't go—your eyesight will last until you get back home, won't it?”
“But I can't go back home; not now.”
“Why not?” demanded the girl. “Why can't you go home?”
“Why, there ain't no money, my dear,” she explained, patiently. “It's a long way off—Colorado is, and there ain't no money. Now, George—George is my brother-in-law—he got me the money to come; but you see it took it all to come here, and to pay them doctors with. And George—he ain't rich, and it pinched him hard for me to come—he says I'll have to wait until he gets money laid up again, and—well he can't tell just when 't will be. He'll send it soon as he gets it,” she hastened to add.
“But what are you going to do in the meantime? It would cost less to get you home than to keep you here.”
“No, I stay with my nephew here. He's willin' I should stay with him till I get my money to go home.”
“Yes, but this nephew, can't he get you the money? Doesn't he know,” she insisted, heatedly, “what it means to you?”
“He's got five children, and not much laid up. And then, he never seen the mountains. He doesn't know what I mean when I try to tell him about gettin' there in time. Why, he says there's many a one living back in the mountains would like to be livin' here. He don't understand—my nephew don't,” she added, apologetically.
“Well,someoneought to understand!” broke from the girl. “I understand! But—” she did her best to make it a laugh—“eleven dollars is every cent I've got in the world!”
“Don't!” implored the woman, as the girl gave up trying to control the tears. “Now, don't you be botherin'. I didn't mean to make you feel so bad. My nephew says I ain't reasonable, and maybe I ain't.”
The girl raised her head. “But youarereasonable. I tell you, youarereasonable!”
“I must be going back,” said the woman, uncertainly. “I'm just making you feel bad, and it won't do no good. And then they may be stirred up about me. Emma—Emma's my nephew's wife—left me at the doctor's office 'cause she had some trading to do, and she was to come back there for me. And then, as I was sittin' there, the pinin' came over me so strong it seemed I just must get up and start! And”—-she smiled wanly—-“this was far as I got.”
“Come over and sit down by this table,” said the girl, impulsively, “and tell me a little about your home back in the mountains. Wouldn't you like to?”
The woman nodded gratefully. “Seems most like getting back to them to find someone that knows about them,” she said, after they had drawn their chairs up to the table and were sitting there side by side.
The girl put her rounded hand over on the thin, withered one. “Tell me about it,” she said again.
“Maybe it wouldn't be much interesting to you, my dear. It's just a common life—mine is. You see, William and I—William was my husband—we went to Georgetown before it really was any town at all. Years and years before the railroad went through, we was there. Was you ever there?” she asked wistfully.
“Oh, very often,” replied the girl. “I love every inch of that country!”
A tear stole down the woman's face. “It's most like being home to find someone that knows about it,” she whispered.
“Yes, William and I went there when 'twas all new country,” she went on, after a pause. “We worked hard, and we laid up a little money. Then, three years ago, William took sick. He was sick for a year, and we had to live up most of what we'd saved. That's why I ain't got none now. It ain't that William didn't provide.”
The girl nodded.
“We seen some hard days. But we was always harmonious—William and I was. And William had a great fondness for the mountains. The night before he died he made them take him over by the window and he looked out and watched the darkness come stealin' over the daylight—you know how it does in them mountains. 'Mother,' he said to me—his voice was that low I could no more 'an hear what he said—'I'll never see another sun go down, but I'm thankful I seen this one.'”
She was crying outright now, and the girl did not try to stop her.
“And that's the reason I love the mountains,” she whispered at last. “It ain't just that they're grand and wonderful to look at. It ain't just the things them tourists sees to talk about. But the mountains has always been like a comfortin' friend to me. John and Sarah is buried there—John and Sarah is my two children that died of fever. And then William is there—like I just told you. And the mountains was a comfort to me in all those times of trouble. They're like an old friend. Seems like they're the best friend I've got on earth.”
“I know what you mean,” said the girl, brokenly. “I know all about it.”
“And you don't think I'm just notional,” she asked wistfully, “in pinin' to get back while—whilst I can look at them?”
The girl held the old hand tightly in hers with a clasp more responsive than words.
“It ain't but I'd know they was there. I could feel they was there all right, but”—her voice sank with the horror of it—“I'm 'fraid I might forget just how they look!”
“Oh, but you won't,” the girl assured her. “You'll remember just how they look.”
“I'm scared of it. I'm scared there might be something I'd forget. And so I just torment myself thinkin'—'Now do I remember this? Can I see just how that looks?' That's the way I got to thinkin' up in the doctor's office, when he told me there was nothing to do, and I was so worked up it seemed I must get up and start!”
“You must try not to worry about it,” murmured the girl. “You'll remember.”
“Well, maybe so. Maybe I will. But that's why I want just one more look. If I could look once more I'd remember it forever. You see I'd look to remember it, and I would. And do you know—seems like I wouldn't mind going blind so much then? When I'd sit facin' them I'd just say to myself: 'Now I know just how they look. I'm seeing them just as if I had my eyes!' The doctor says my sight'll just kind of slip away, and when I look my last look, when it gets dimmer and dimmer to me, I want the last thing I see to be them mountains where William and me worked and was so happy! Seems like I can't bear it to have my sight slip away here in Chicago, where there's nothing I want to look at! And then to have a little left—to have just a little left!—and to know I could see if I was there to look—and to know that when I get there 'twill be—Oh, I'll be rebellious-like here—and I'd be contented there! I don't want to be complainin'—I don't want to!—but when I've only got a little left I want it—oh, I want it for them things I want to see!”
“You will see them,” insisted the girl passionately. “I'm not going to believe the world can be so hideous as that!”
“Well, maybe so,” said the woman, rising. “But I don't know where 'twill come from,” she added doubtfully.
She took her back to the doctor's office and left her in the care of the stolid Emma. “Seems most like I'd been back home,” she said in parting; and the girl promised to come and see her and talk with her about the mountains. The woman thought that talking about them would help her to remember just how they looked.
And then the girl returned to the library. She did not know why she did so. In truth she scarcely knew she was going there until she found herself sitting before that same secluded table at which she and the woman had sat a little while before. For a long time she sat there with her head in her hands, tears falling upon a pad of yellow paper on the table before her.
Finally she dried her eyes, opened her purse, and counted her money. It seemed that out of her great desire, out of her great new need, there must be more than she had thought. But there was not, and she folded her hands upon the two five-dollar bills and the one silver dollar and looked hopelessly about the big room.
She had forgotten her own disappointments, her own loneliness. She was oblivious to everything in the world now save what seemed the absolute necessity of getting the woman back to the mountains while she had eyes to see them.
But what could she do? Again she counted the money. She could make herself, some way or other, get along without one of the five-dollar bills, but five dollars would not take one very close to the mountains. It was at that moment that she saw a man standing before the Denver paper, and noticed that another man was waiting to take his place. The one who was reading had a dinner pail in his hand. The clothes of the other told that he, too, was of the world's workers. It was clear to the girl that the man at the file was reading the paper from home; and the man who was ready to take his place looked as if waiting for something less impersonal than the news of the day.
The idea came upon her with such suddenness, so full born, that it made her gasp. They—the people who came to read the Denver paper, the people who loved the mountains and were far from them, the people who were themselves homesick and full of longing—were the people to understand.
It took her but a minute to act. She put the silver dollar and one five-dollar bill back in her purse. She clutched the other bill in her left hand, picked up a pencil, and began to write. She headed the petition: “To all who know and love the mountains,” and she told the story with the simpleness of one speaking from the heart, and the directness of one who speaks to those sure to understand. “And so I found her here by the Denver paper,” she said, after she had stated the tragic facts, “because it was the closest she could come to the mountains. Her heart is not breaking because she is going blind. It is breaking because she may never again look with seeing eyes upon those great hills which rise up about her home. We must do it for her simply because we would wish that, under like circumstances, someone would do it for us. She belongs to us because we understand.
“If you can only give fifty cents, please do not hold it back because it seems but little. Fifty cents will take her twenty miles nearer home—twenty miles closer to the things upon which she longs that her last seeing glance may fall.”
After she had written it she rose, and, the five-dollar bill in one hand, the sheets of yellow paper in the other, walked down the long room to the desk at which one of the librarians sat. The girl's cheeks were very red, her eyes shining as she poured out the story. They mingled their tears, for the girl at the desk was herself young and far from home, and then they walked back to the Denver paper and pinned the sheets of yellow paper just above the file. At the bottom of the petition the librarian wrote: “Leave your money at the desk in this room. It will be properly attended to.” The girl from Colorado then turned over her five-dollar bill and passed out into the gathering night.
Her heart was brimming with joy. “I can get a cheaper boarding place,” she told herself, as she joined the home-going crowds, “and until something else turns up I'll just look around and see if I can't get a place in a store.”
One by one they had gathered around while the woman was telling the story. “And so, if you don't mind,” she said, in conclusion, “I'd like to have you put in a little piece that I got to Denver safe, so's they can see it. They was all so worked up about when I'd get here. Would that cost much?” she asked timidly.
“Not a cent,” said the city editor, his voice gruff with the attempt to keep it steady.
“You might say, if it wouldn't take too much room, that I was much pleased with the prospect of getting home before sundown to-night.”
“You needn't worry but what we'll say it all,” he assured her. “We'll say a great deal more than you have any idea of.”
“I'm very thankful to you,” she said, as she rose to go.
They sat there for a moment in silence. “When one considers,” someone began, “that they were people who were pushed too close even to subscribe to a daily paper—”
“When one considers,” said the city editor, “that the girl who started it had just eleven dollars to her name—” And then he, too, stopped abruptly and there was another long moment of silence.
After that he looked around at the reporters. “Well, it's too bad you can't all have it, when it's so big a chance, but I guess it falls logically to Raymond. And in writing it, just remember, Raymond, that the biggest stories are not written about wars, or about politics, or even murders. The biggest stories are written about the things which draw human beings closer together. And the chance to write them doesn't come every day, or every year, or every lifetime. And I'll tell you, boys, all of you, when it seems sometimes that the milk of human kindness has all turned sour, just think back to the little story you heard this afternoon.”
Slowly the sun slipped down behind the mountains; slowly the long purple shadows deepened to black; and with the coming of the night there settled over the everlasting hills, and over the soul of one who had returned to them, that satisfying calm that men call peace.
Many visitors to the State-house made the mistake of looking upon the Governor as the most important personage in the building. They would walk up and down the corridors, hoping for a glimpse of some of the leading officials, when all the while Freckles McGrath, the real character of the Capitol, and by all odds the most illustrious person in it, was at once accessible and affable.
Freckles McGrath was the elevator boy. In the official register his name had gone down as William, but that was a mere concession to the constituents to whom the official register was sent out. In the newspapers—and he appeared with frequency in the newspapers—he was always “Freckles,” and every one from the Governor down gave him that title, the appropriateness of which was stamped a hundred fold upon his shrewd, jolly Irish face.
Like every one else on the State pay-roll, Freckles was keyed high during this first week of the new session. It was a reform Legislature, and so imbued was it with the idea of reforming that there was grave danger of its forcing reformation upon everything in sight. It happened that the Governor was of the same faction of the party as that dominant in the Legislature; reform breathed through every nook and crevice of the great building.
But high above all else in importance towered the Kelley Bill. From the very opening of the session there was scarcely a day when some of Freckles' passengers did not in hushed whispers mention the Kelley Bill. From what he could pick up about the building, and what he read in the newspapers, Freckles put together a few ideas as to what the Kelley Bill really was. It was a great reform measure, and it was going to show the railroads that they did not own the State. The railroads were going to have to pay more taxes, and they were making an awful fuss about it; but if the Kelley Bill could be put through it would be a great victory for reform, and would make the Governor “solid” in the State.
Freckles McGrath was strong for reform. That was partly because the snatches of speeches he heard in the Legislature were more thrilling when for reform than when against it; it was partly because he adored the Governor, and in no small part because he despised Mr. Ludlow.
Mr. Ludlow was a lobbyist. Some of the members of the Legislature were Mr. Ludlow's property—or at least so Freckles inferred from conversation overheard at his post. There had been a great deal of talk that session about Mr. Ludlow's methods.
Freckles himself was no snob. Although he had heard Mr. Ludlow called disgraceful, and although he firmly believed he was disgraceful, he did not consider that any reason for not speaking to him. And so when Mr. Ludlow got in all alone one morning, and the occasion seemed to demand recognition of some sort, Freckles had chirped: “Good-morning!”
But the man, possibly deep in something else, simply knit together his brows and gave no sign of having heard. After that, Henry Ludlow, lobbyist, and Freckles McGrath, elevator boy, were enemies.
A little before noon, one day near the end of the session, a member of the Senate and a member of the House rode down together in the elevator.
“There's no use waiting any longer,” the Senator was saying as they got in. “We're as strong now as we're going to be. It's a matter of Stacy's vote, and that's a matter of who sees him last.”
Freckles widened out his ears and gauged the elevator for very slow running. Stacy had been written up in the papers as a wabbler on the Kelley Bill.
“He's all right now,” pursued the Senator, “but there's every chance that Ludlow will see him before he casts his vote this afternoon, and then—oh, I don't know!” and with a weary little flourish of his hands the Senator stepped off.
Freckles McGrath sat wrapped in deep thought. The Kelley Bill was coming up in the Senate that afternoon. If Senator Stacy voted for it, it would pass. If he voted against it, it would fail. He would vote for it if he didn't see Mr. Ludlow; he wouldn't vote for it if he did. That was the situation, and the Governor's whole future, Freckles felt, was at stake.
The bell rang sharply, and he was vaguely conscious then that it had been ringing before. In the next half-hour he was very busy taking down the members of the Legislature. Strangely enough, Senator Stacy and the Governor went down the same trip, and Freckles beamed with approbation when, he saw them walk out of the building together.
Stacy was one of the first of the senators to return. Freckles sized him up keenly as he stepped into the elevator, and decided that he was still firm. But there was a look about Senator Stacy's mouth which suggested that there was no use in being too sure of him. Freckles considered the advisability of bursting forth and telling him how much better it would be to stick with the reform fellows; but just as the boy got his courage screwed up to speaking point, Senator Stacy got off.
About ten minutes later Freckles had the elevator on the ground floor, and was sitting there reading a paper, when he heard a step that made him prick up his ears. The next minute Mr. Ludlow turned the corner. He was immaculately dressed, as usual, and his iron-grey moustache seemed to stand out just a little more pompously than ever. There was a sneering look in his eyes as he stepped into the car. It seemed to be saying: “They thought they could beat me, did they? Oh, they're easy, they are!”
Freckles McGrath slammed the door of the cage and started the car up. He did not know what he was going to do, but he had an idea that he did not want any other passenger. When half way between the basement and the first floor, he stopped the elevator. He must have time to think. If he took that man up to the Senate Chamber, he would simply strike the death-blow to reform! And so he knelt and pretended to be fixing something, and he thought fast and hard.
“Something broke?” asked an anxious voice.
Freckles looked around into Mr. Ludlow's face, and he saw that the eminent lobbyist was nervous.
“Yes,” he said calmly. “It's acting queer. Something's all out of whack.”
“Well, drop it to the basement and let me out,” said Mr. Ludlow sharply.
“Can't drop it,” responded Freckles. “She's stuck.”
Mr. Ludlow came and looked things over, but his knowledge did not extend to the mechanism of elevators.
“Better call someone to come and take us out,” he said nervously.
Freckles straightened himself up. A glitter had come into his small grey eyes, and red spots were burning in his freckled cheeks.
“I think she'll run now,” he said.
And she did run. Never in all its history had that State-house elevator run as it ran then. It rushed past the first and second floors like a thing let loose, with an utter abandonment that caused the blood to forsake the eminent lobbyist's face.
“Stop it, boy!” he cried in alarm.
“Can't!” responded Freckles, his voice thick with terror. “Running away!” he gasped.
“Will it—fall?” whispered the lobbyist.
“I—I think so!” blubbered Freckles.
The central portion of the State-house was very high. Above that part of the building which was in use there was a long stretch leading to the tower. The shaft had been built clear up, though practically unused. Past floors used for store-rooms, past floors used for nothing at all, they went—the man's face white, the boy wailing out incoherent supplications. And then, within ten feet of the top of the shaft, and within a foot of the top floor of the building, the elevator came to a rickety stop. It wabbled back and forth; it did strange and terrible things.
“She's falling!” panted Freckles. “Climb!”
And Henry Ludlow climbed. He got the door open, and he clambered up. No sooner had the man's feet touched the solid floor than Freckles reached up and slammed the door of the cage. Why he did that he was not sure at the time. Later he felt that something had warned him not to give his prisoner's voice a full sweep down the shaft.
Henry Ludlow was far from dull. As he saw the quick but even descent of the car, he knew that he had been tricked. He would have been more than human had there not burst from him furious and threatening words. But what was the use? The car was going down—down—down, and there he was, perhaps hundreds of feet above any one else in the building—alone, tricked, beaten!
Of course he tried the door at the head of the winding stairway, knowing full well that it would be locked. They always kept it locked; he had heard one of the janitors asking for the keys to take a party up just a few days before. Perhaps he could get out on top of the building and make signals of distress. But the door leading outside was locked also. There he was—helpless. And below—well, below they were passing the Kelley Bill!
He rattled the grating of the elevator shaft. He made strange, loud noises, knowing all the while he could not make himself heard. And then at last, alone in the State-house attic, Henry Ludlow, eminent lobbyist, sat down on a box and nursed his fury.
Below, Freckles McGrath, the youngest champion of reform in the building, was putting on a bold front. He laughed and he talked and he whistled. He took people up and down with as much nonchalance as if he did not know that up at the top of that shaft angry eyes were straining themselves for a glimpse of the car, and terrible curses were descending, literally, upon his stubby red head.
It was a great afternoon at the State-house. Every one thronged to the doors of the Senate Chamber, where they were putting through the Kelley Bill. The speeches made in behalf of the measure were brief. The great thing now was not to make speeches; it was to reach “S” on roll-call before a man with iron-grey hair and an iron-grey moustache could come in and say something to the fair-haired member with the weak mouth who sat near the rear of the chamber.
Freckles was called away just as it went to a vote. When he came back Senator Kelley was standing out in the corridor, and a great crowd of men were standing around slapping him on the back. The Governor himself was standing on the steps of the Senate Chamber; his eyes were bright, and he was smiling.
Freckles turned his car back to the basement. He wanted to be all alone for a minute, to dwell in solitude upon the fact that it was he, Freckles McGrath, who had won this great victory for reform. It was he, Freckles McGrath, who had assured the Governor's future. Why, perhaps he had that afternoon made for himself a name which would be handed down in the histories!
Freckles was a kind little boy, and he knew that an elegant gentleman could not find the attic any too pleasant a place in which to spend the afternoon, go he decided to go up and get Mr. Ludlow. It took courage; but he had won his victory and this was no time for faltering.
There was something gruesome about the long ascent. He thought of stories he had read of lonely turrets in which men were beheaded, and otherwise made away with. It seemed he would never come to the top, and when at last he did it was to find two of the most awful-looking eyes he had ever seen—eyes that looked as though furies were going to escape from them—peering down upon him.
The sight of that car, moving smoothly and securely up to the top, and the sight of that audacious little boy with the freckled face and the bat-like eyes, that little boy who had played his game so well, who had wrought such havoc, was too much for Henry Ludlow's self-control. Words such as he had never used before, such as he would not have supposed himself capable of using, burst from him. But Freckles stood calmly gazing up at the infuriated lobbyist, and just as Mr. Ludlow was saying, “I'll beat your head open, you little brat!” he calmly reversed the handle and sent the car skimming smoothly to realms below. He was followed by an angry yell, and then by a loud request to return, but he heeded them not, and for some time longer the car made its usual rounds between the basement and the legislative chambers.
In just an hour Freckles tried it again. He sent the car to within three feet of the attic floor, and then peered through the grating, his face tied in a knot of interrogation. The eminent lobbyist stood there gulping down wrath and pride, knowing well enough what was expected of him.
“Oh—all right,” he muttered at last, and with that much of an understanding Freckles sent the car up, opened the door, and Henry Ludlow stepped in.
No word was spoken between them until the light from the floor upon which the Senate Chamber was situated came in view. Then Freckles turned with a polite inquiry as to where the gentleman wished to get off.
“You may take me down to the office of the Governor,” said Mr. Ludlow stonily, meaningly.
“Sure,” said Freckles cheerfully. “Guess you'll find the Governor in his office now. He's been in the Senate most of the afternoon, watching 'em pass that Kelley Bill.”
Mr. Ludlow's lips drew in tightly. He squared his shoulders, and his silence was tremendous.
In just fifteen minutes Freckles was sent for from the executive office.
“I demand his discharge!” Mr. Ludlow was saying as the elevator boy entered.
“It happens you're not running this building,” the Governor returned with a good deal of acidity. “Though of course,” he added with dignity, “the matter will be carefully investigated.”
The Governor was one great chuckle inside, and his heart was full of admiration and gratitude; but would Freckles be equal to bluffing it through? Would the boy have the finesse, the nice subtlety, the real master hand, the situation demanded? If not, then—imp of salvation though he was—in the interest of reform, Freckles would have to go.
It was a very innocent looking boy who stood before him and looked inquiringly into his face.
“William,” began the Governor—Freckles was pained at first, and then remembered that officially he was William—“this gentleman has made a very serious charge against you.”
Freckles looked at Mr. Ludlow in a hurt way, and waited for the Governor to proceed.
“He says,” went on the chief executive, “that you deliberately took him to the top of the building and wilfully left him there a prisoner all afternoon. Did you do that?”
“Oh, sir,” burst forth Freckles, “I did the very best I could to save his life! I was willing to sacrifice mine for him. I—”
“You little liar!” broke in Ludlow.
The Governor held up his hand. “You had your chance. Let him have his.”
“You see, Governor,” began Freckles, as if anxious to set right a great wrong which had been done him, “the car is acting bad. The engineer said only this morning it needed a going over. When it took that awful shoot, I lost control of it. Maybe I'm to be discharged for losing control of it, but not”—Freckles sniffled pathetically—-“but not for anything like what he says I done. Why Governor,” he went on, ramming his knuckles into his eyes, “I ain't got nothing against him! What'd I take him to the attic for?”
“Of course not for money,” sneered Mr. Ludlow.
The Governor turned on him sharply. “When you can bring any proof of that, I'll be ready to hear it. Until you can, you'd better leave it out of the question.”
“Strange it should have happened this very afternoon,” put in the eminent lobbyist.
The Governor looked at him with open countenance. “You were especially interested in something this afternoon? I thought you told me you had no vital interest here this session.”
There was nothing to be said. Mr. Ludlow said nothing.
“Now, William,” pursued the Governor, fearful in his heart that this would be Freckles' undoing, “why did you close the door of the shaft before you started down?”
“Well, you see, sir,” began Freckles, still tremulously, “I'm so used to closin' doors. Closin' doors has become a kind of second nature with me. I've been told about it so many times. And up there, though I thought I was losin' my life, still I didn't neglect my duty.”
The Governor put his hand to his mouth and coughed.
“And why,” he went on, more secure now, for a boy who could get out of that could get out of anything, “why was it you didn't make some immediate effort to get Mr. Ludlow down? Why didn't you notify someone, or do something about it?”
“Why, I supposed, of course, he walked down by the stairs,” cried Freckles. “I never dreamed he'd want to trust the elevator after the way she had acted.”
“The door was locked,” snarled the eminent lobbyist.
“Well, now, you see, I didn't know that,” explained Freckles expansively. “Late in the afternoon I took a run up just to test the car—and there you were! I never was so surprised in my life. I supposed, of course, sir, that you'd spent the afternoon in the Senate, along with everybody else.”
Once more the Governor put his hand to his mouth.
“Your case will come before the executive council at its next meeting, William. And if anything like this should happen again, you will be discharged on the spot.” Freckles bowed. “You may go now.”
When he was almost at the door the Governor called to him.
“Don't you think, William,” he said—the Governor felt that he and Freckles could afford to be generous—“that you should apologise to the gentleman for the really grave inconvenience to which you have been the means of subjecting him?”
Freckles' little grey eyes grew steely. He looked at Henry Ludlow, and there was an ominous silence. Then light broke over his face. “On behalf of the elevator,” he said, “I apologise.”
And a third time the Governor's hand was raised to his mouth.
The next week Freckles was wearing a signet ring; long and audibly had he sighed for a ring of such kind and proportions. He was at some pains in explaining to everyone to whom he showed it that it had been sent him by “a friend up home.”
Thus had another ideal tumbled to the rubbish heap! She seemed to be breathing the dust which the newly fallen had stirred up among its longer dead fellows. Certainly she was breathing the dust from somewhere.
During her senior year at the university, when people would ask: “And what are you going to do when you leave school, Miss Willard?” she would respond with anything that came to hand, secretly hugging to her mind that idea of getting a position in a publishing house. Her conception of her publishing house was finished about the same time as her class-day gown. She was to have a roll-top desk—probably of mahogany—and a big chair which whirled round like that in the office of the under-graduate dean. She was to have a little office all by herself, opening on a bigger office—the little one marked “Private.” There were to be beautiful rugs—the general effect not unlike the library at the University Club—books and pictures and cultivated gentlemen who spoke often of Greek tragedies and the Renaissance. She was a little uncertain as to her duties, but had a general idea about getting down between nine and ten, reading the morning paper, cutting the latest magazine, and then “writing something.”
Commencement was now four months past, and one of her professors had indeed secured for her a position in a Chicago “publishing house.” This was her first morning and she was standing at the window looking down into Dearborn Street while the man who was to have her in charge was fixing a place for her to sit.
That the publishing house should be on Dearborn Street had been her first blow, for she had long located her publishing house on that beautiful stretch of Michigan Avenue which overlooked the lake. But the real insult was that this publishing house, instead of having a building, or at least a floor, all to itself, simply had a place penned off in a bleak, dirty building such as one who had done work in sociological research instinctively associated with a box factory. And the thing which fairly trailed her visions in the dust was that the partition penning them off did not extend to the ceiling, and the adjoining room being occupied by a patent medicine company, she was face to face with glaring endorsements of Dr. Bunting's Famous Kidney and Bladder Cure. Taken all in all there seemed little chance for Greek tragedies or the Renaissance.
The man who was “running things”—she buried her phraseology with her dreams—wore a skull cap, and his moustache dragged down below his chin. Just at present he was engaged in noisily pulling a most unliterary pine table from a dark corner to a place near the window. That accomplished, an ostentatious hunt ensued, resulting in the triumphant flourish of a feather duster. Several knocks at the table, and the dust of many months—perhaps likewise of many dreams—ascended to a resting place on the endorsement of Dr. Bunting's Kidney and Bladder Cure. He next produced a short, straight-backed chair which she recognised as brother to the one which used to stand behind their kitchen stove. He gave it a shake, thus delicately indicating that she was receiving special favours in this matter of an able-bodied chair, and then announced with brisk satisfaction: “So! Now we are ready to begin.” She murmured a “Thank you,” seated herself and her buried hopes in this chair which did not whirl round, and leaned her arms upon a table which did not even dream in mahogany.
In theotherpublishing house, one pushed buttons and uniformed menials appeared—noiselessly, quickly and deferentially. At this moment a boy with sandy hair brushed straight back in a manner either statesmanlike or clownlike—things were too involved to know which—shuffled in with an armful of yellow paper which he flopped down on the pine table. After a minute he returned with a warbled “Take Me Back to New York Town” and a paste-pot. And upon his third appearance he was practising gymnastics with a huge pair of shears, which he finally presented, grinningly.
There was a long pause, broken only by the sonorous voice of Dr. Bunting upbraiding someone for not having billed out that stuff to Apple Grove, and then the sandy-haired boy appeared bearing a large dictionary, followed by the man in the skull cap behind a dictionary of equal unwieldiness. These were set down on either side of the yellow paper, and he who was filling the position of cultivated gentleman pulled up a chair, briskly.
“Has Professor Lee explained to you the nature of our work?” he wanted to know.
“No,” she replied, half grimly, a little humourously, and not far from tearfully, “he didn't—explain.”
“Then it is my pleasure to inform you,” he began, blinking at her importantly, “that we are engaged here in the making of a dictionary.”
“Adic—?” but she swallowed the gasp in the laugh coming up to meet it, and of their union was born a saving cough.
“Quite an overpowering thought, is it not?” he agreed pleasantly. “Now you see you have before you the two dictionaries you will use most, and over in that case you will find other references. The main thing”—his voice sank to an impressive whisper—“isnotto infringe the copyright. The publisher was in yesterday and made a little talk to the force, and he said that any one who handed in a piece of copy infringing the copyright simply employed that means of writing his own resignation. Neat way of putting it, was it not?”
“Yes,wasn'tit—neat?” she agreed, wildly.
She was conscious of a man's having stepped in behind her and taken a seat at the table next hers. She heard him opening his dictionaries and getting out his paper. Then the man in the skull cap had risen and was saying genially: “Well, here is a piece of old Webster, your first 'take'—no copyright on this, you see, but you must modernise and expand. Don't miss any of the good words in either of these dictionaries. Here you have dictionaries, copy-paper, paste, and Professor Lee assures me you have brains—all the necessary ingredients for successful lexicography. We are to have some rules printed to-morrow, and in the meantime I trust I've made myself clear. The main thing”—he bent down and spoke it solemnly—“isnotto infringe the copyright.” With a cheerful nod he was gone, and she heard him saying to the man at the next table: “Mr. Clifford, I shall have to ask you to be more careful about getting in promptly at eight.”
She removed the cover from her paste-pot and dabbled a little on a piece of paper. Then she tried the unwieldy shears on another piece of paper. She then opened one of her dictionaries and read studiously for fifteen minutes. That accomplished, she opened the other dictionary and pursued it for twelve minutes. Then she took the column of “old Webster,” which had been handed her pasted on a piece of yellow paper, and set about attempting to commit it to memory. She looked up to be met with the statement that Mrs. Marjory Van Luce De Vane, after spending years under the so-called best surgeons of the country, had been cured in six weeks by Dr. Bunting's Famous Kidney and Bladder Cure. She pushed the dictionaries petulantly from her, and leaning her very red cheek upon her hand, her hazel eyes blurred with tears of perplexity and resentment, her mouth drawn in pathetic little lines of uncertainty, looked over at the sprawling warehouse on the opposite side of Dearborn Street. She was just considering the direct manner of writing one's resignation—not knowing how to infringe the copyright—when a voice said: “I beg pardon, but I wonder if I can help you any?”
She had never heard a voice like that before. Or,hadshe heard it?—and where? She looked at him, a long, startled gaze. Something made her think of the voice the prince used to have in long-ago dreams. She looked into a face that was dark and thin and—different. Two very dark eyes were looking at her kindly, and a mouth which was a baffling combination of things to be loved and things to be deplored was twitching a little, as though it would like to join the eyes in a smile, if it dared.
Because he saw both how funny and how hard it was, she liked him. It would have been quite different had he seen either one without the other.
“You can tell me hownotto infringe the copyright,” she laughed. “I'm not sure that I know what a copyright is.”
He laughed—a laugh which belonged with his voice. “Mr. Littletree isn't as lucid as he thinks he is. I've been here a week or so, and picked up a few things you might like to know.”
He pulled his chair closer to her table then and gave her a lesson in the making of copy. Edna Willard was never one-half so attractive as when absorbed in a thing which someone was showing her how to do. Her hazel eyes would widen and glisten with the joy of comprehending; her cheeks would flush a deeper pink with the coming of new light, her mouth would part in a child-like way it had forgotten to outgrow, her head would nod gleefully in token that she understood, and she had a way of pulling at her wavy hair and making it more wavy than it had been before. The man at the next table was a long time in explaining the making of a dictionary. He spoke in low tones, often looking at the figure of the man in the skull cap, who was sitting with his back to them, looking over copy. Once she cried, excitedly: “Oh—Isee!” and he warned, “S—h!” explaining, “Let him think you got it all from him. It will give you a better stand-in.” She nodded, appreciatively, and felt very well acquainted with this kind man whose voice made her think of something—called to something—she did not just know what.
After that she became so absorbed in lexicography that when the men began putting away their things it was hard to realise that the morning had gone. It was a new and difficult game, the evasion of the copyright furnishing the stimulus of a hazard.
The man at the next table had been watching her with an amused admiration. Her child-like absorption, the way every emotion from perplexity to satisfaction expressed itself in the poise of her head and the pucker of her face, took him back over years emotionally barren to the time when he too had those easily stirred enthusiasms of youth. For the man at the next table was far from young now. His mouth had never quite parted with boyishness, but there was more white than black in his hair, and the lines about his mouth told that time, as well as forces more aging than time, had laid heavy hand upon him. But when he looked at the girl and told her with a smile that it was time to stop work, it was a smile and a voice to defy the most tell-tale face in all the world.
During her luncheon, as she watched the strange people coming and going, she did much wondering. She wondered why it was that so many of the men at the dictionary place were very old men; she wondered if it would be a good dictionary—one that would be used in the schools; she wondered if Dr. Bunting had made a great deal of money, and most of all she wondered about the man at the next table whose voice was like—like a dream which she did not know that she had dreamed.
When she had returned to the straggling old building, had stumbled down the narrow, dark hall and opened the door of the big bleak room, she saw that the man at the next table was the only one who had returned from luncheon. Something in his profile made her stand there very still. He had not heard her come in, and he was looking straight ahead, eyes half closed, mouth set—no unsurrendered boyishness there now. Wholly unconsciously she took an impulsive step forward. But she stopped, for she saw, and felt without really understanding, that it was not just the moment's pain, but the revealed pain of years. Just then he began to cough, and it seemed the cough, too, was more than of the moment. And then he turned and saw her, and smiled, and the smile changed all.
As the afternoon wore on the man stopped working and turning a little in his chair sat there covertly watching the girl. She was just typically girl. It was written that she had spent her days in the happy ways of healthful girlhood. He supposed that a great many young fellows had fallen in love with her—nice, clean young fellows, the kind she would naturally meet. And then his eyes closed for a minute and he put up his hand and brushed back his hair; there was weariness, weariness weary of itself, in the gesture. He looked about the room and scanned the faces of the men, most of them older than he, many of them men whose histories were well known to him. They were the usual hangers on about newspaper offices; men who, for one reason or other—age, dissipation, antiquated methods—had been pitched over, men for whom such work as this came as a godsend. They were the men of yesterday—men whom the world had rushed past. She was the only one there, this girl who would probably sit here beside him for many months, with whom the future had anything to do. Youth!—Goodness!—Joy!—Hope!—strange things to bring to a place like this. And as if their alienism disturbed him, he moved restlessly, almost resentfully, bit his lips nervously, moistened them, and began putting away his things.
As the girl was starting home along Dearborn Street a few minutes later, she chanced to look in a window. She saw that it was a saloon, but before she could turn away she saw a man with a white face—white with the peculiar whiteness of a dark face, standing before the bar drinking from a small glass. She stood still, arrested by a look such as she had never seen before: a panting human soul sobbingly fluttering down into something from which it had spent all its force in trying to rise. When she recalled herself and passed on, a mist which she could neither account for nor banish was dimming the clear hazel of her eyes.
The next day was a hard one at the dictionary place. She told herself it was because the novelty of it was wearing away, because her fingers ached, because it tired her back to sit in that horrid chair. She did not admit of any connection between her flagging interest and the fact that the place at the next table was vacant.
The following day he was still absent. She assumed that it was nervousness occasioned by her queer surroundings made her look around whenever she heard a step behind her. Where was he? Where had that look carried him? If he were in trouble, was there no one to help him?
The third day she did an unpremeditated thing. The man in the skull cap had been showing her something about the copy. As he was leaving, she asked: “Is the man who sits at the next table coming back?”
“Oh yes,” he replied grimly, “he'll be back.”
“Because,” she went on, “if he wasn't, I thought I would take his shears. These hurt my fingers.”
He made the exchange for her—and after that things went better.
He did return late the next morning. After he had taken his place he looked over at her and smiled. He looked sick and shaken—as if something that knew no mercy had taken hold of him and wrung body and soul.
“You have been ill?” she asked, with timid solicitude.
“Oh no,” he replied, rather shortly.
He was quiet all that day, but the next day they talked about the work, laughed together over funny definitions they found. She felt that he could tell many interesting things about himself, if he cared to.
As the days went on he did tell some of those things—out of the way places where he had worked, queer people whom he had known. It seemed that words came to him as gifts, came freely, happily, pleased, perhaps, to be borne by so sympathetic a voice. And there was another thing about him. He seemed always to know just what she was trying to say; he never missed the unexpressed. That made it easy to say things to him; there seemed a certain at-homeness between his thought and hers. She accounted for her interest in him by telling herself she had never known any one like that before. Now Harold, the boy whom she knew best out at the university, why one had tosaythings to Harold to make him understand! And Harold never left one wondering—wondering what he had meant by that smile, what he had been going to say when he started to say something and stopped, wondering what it was about his face that one could not understand. Harold never could claim as his the hour after he had left her, and was one ever close to anyone with whom one did not spend some of the hours of absence? She began to see that hours spent together when apart were the most intimate hours of all.
And as Harold did not make one wonder, so he did not make one worry. Never in all her life had there been a lump in her throat when she thought of Harold. There was often a lump in her throat when the man at the next table was coughing.
One day, she had been there about two months, she said something to him about it. It was hard; it seemed forcing one's way into a room that had never been opened to one—there were several doors he kept closed.
“Mr. Clifford,” she turned to him impetuously as they were putting away their things that night, “will you mind if I say something to you?”
He was covering his paste-pot. He looked up at her strangely. The closed door seemed to open a little way. “I can't conceive of 'minding' anything you might say to me, Miss Noah,”—he had called her Miss Noah ever since she, by mistake, had one day called him Mr. Webster.
“You see,” she hurried on, very timid, now that the door had opened a little, “you have been so good to me. Because you have been so good to me it seems that I have some right to—to—”
His head was resting upon his hand, and he leaned a little closer as though listening for something he wanted to hear.
“I had a cousin who had a cough like yours,”—brave now that she could not go back—“and he went down to New Mexico and stayed for a year, and when he came back—when he came back he was as well as any of us. It seems so foolish not to”—her voice broke, now that it had so valiantly carried it—“not to—”
He looked at her, and that was all. But she was never wholly the same again after that look. It enveloped her being in a something which left her richer—different. It was a look to light the dark place between two human souls. It seemed for the moment that words would follow it, but as if feeling their helplessness—perhaps needlessness—they sank back unuttered, and at the last he got up, abruptly, and walked away.
One night, while waiting for the elevator, she heard two of the men talking about him. When she went out on the street it was with head high, cheeks hot. For nothing is so hard to hear as that which one has half known, and evaded. One never denies so hotly as in denying to one's self what one fears is true, and one never resents so bitterly as in resenting that which one cannot say one has the right to resent.
That night she lay in her bed with wide open eyes, going over and over the things they had said. “Cure?”—one of them had scoffed, after telling how brilliant he had been before he “went to pieces”—“why all the cures on earth couldn't help him! He can go just so far, and then he can no more stop himself—oh, about as much as an ant could stop a prairie fire!”
She finally turned over on her pillow and sobbed; and she wondered why—wondered, yet knew.
But it resulted in the flowering of her tenderness for him. Interest mounted to defiance. It ended in blind, passionate desire to “make it up” to him. And again he was so different from Harold; Harold did not impress himself upon one by upsetting all one's preconceived ideas.
She felt now that she understood better—understood the closed doors. He was—she could think of no better word than sensitive.
And that is why, several mornings later, she very courageously—for it did take courage—threw this little note over on his desk—they had formed a habit of writing notes to each other, sometimes about the words, sometimes about other things.
“IN-VI-TA-TION,n.That which Miss Noah extends to Mr. Webster for Friday evening, December second, at the house where she lives—hasn't she already told him where that is? It is the wish of Miss Noah to present Mr. Webster to various other Miss Noahs, all of whom are desirous of making his acquaintance.”
She was absurdly nervous at luncheon that day, and kept telling herself with severity not to act like a high-school girl. He was late in returning that noon, and though there seemed a new something in his voice when he asked if he hadn't better sharpen her pencils, he said nothing about her new definition of invitation. It was almost five o'clock when he threw this over on her desk:
“AP-PRE-CI-A-TION,n.That sentiment inspired in Mr. Webster by the kind invitation of Miss Noah for Friday evening.
“RE-GRET,n.That which Mr. Webster experiences because, for reasons into which he cannot go in detail, it is impossible for him to accept Miss Noah's invitation.
“RE-SENT-MENT,n.That which is inspired in Mr. Webster by the insinuation that there are other Miss Noahs in the world.”
Then below he had written: “Three hours later. Miss Noah, the world is queer. Some day you may find out—though I hope you never will—that it is frequently the things we most want to do that we must leave undone. Miss Noah, won't you go on bringing me as much of yourself as you can to Dearborn Street, and try not to think much about my not being able to know the Miss Noah of Hyde Park? And little Miss Noah—I thank you. There aren't words enough in this old book of ours to tell you how much—or why.”
That night he hurried away with never a joke about how many words she had written that day. She did not look up as he stood there putting on his coat.
It was spring now, and the dictionary staff had begun on W.
They had written of Joy, of Hope and Life and Love, and many other things. Life seemed pressing just behind some of those definitions, pressing the harder, perhaps, because it could not break through the surface.
For it did not break through; it flooded just beneath.
How did she know that he cared for her? She could not possibly have told. Perhaps the nearest to actual proof she could bring was that he always saw that her overshoes were put in a warm place. And when one came down to facts, the putting of a girl's rubbers near the radiator did not necessarily mean love.
Perhaps then it was because there was no proof of it that she was most sure. For some of the most sure things in the world are things which cannot be proved.
It was only that they worked together and were friends; that they laughed together over funny definitions they found, that he was kind to her, and that they seemed remarkably close together.
That is as far as facts can take it.
And just there—it begins.
For the force which rushes beneath the facts of life, caring nothing for conditions, not asking what one desires or what one thinks best, caring as little about a past as about a future—save its own future—the force which can laugh at man's institutions and batter over in one sweep what he likes to call his wisdom, was sweeping them on. And because it could get no other recognition it forced its way into the moments when he asked her for an eraser, when she wanted to know how to spell a word. He could not so much as ask her if she needed more copy-paper without seeming to be lavishing upon her all the love of all the ages.
And so the winter had worn on, and there was really nothing whatever to tell about it.
She was quiet this morning, and kept her head bent low over her work. For she had estimated the number of pages there were between W and Z. Soon they would be at Z;—and then? Then? Shyly she turned and looked at him; he too was bent over his work. When she came in she had said something about its being spring, and that there must be wild flowers in the woods. Since then he had not looked up.
Suddenly it came to her—tenderly, hotly, fearfully yet bravely, that it was she who must meet Z. She looked at him again, covertly. And she felt that she understood. It was the lines in his face made it clearest. Years, and things blacker, less easily surmounted than years—oh yes, that too she faced fearlessly—were piled in between. She knew now that it was she—not he—who could push them aside.
It was all very unmaidenly, of course; but maidenly is a word love and life and desire may crowd from the page.
Perhaps she would not have thrown it after all—the little note she had written—had it not been that when she went over for more copy-paper she stood for a minute looking out the window. Even on Dearborn Street the seductiveness of spring was in the air. Spring, and all that spring meant, filled her.